Office 2013 – Much Ado About Nothing New

/in

 

Microsoft recently announced and started providing demonstrations of Office 2013.  And as discussed in this Vanity Fair article, it is clear that Microsoft continues to suffer from lack of innovation.  The number of new features is limited, many of the new features are playing “catch up”, and Office 2013 will lock you into a closed ecosystem.

Here is some of what is “new” in Office 2013:

  • Office 2013 will work with touch and stylus devices like tablets and smart-phones.  You will be able to navigate and annotate documents using touch, much like you can today with a mouse in Powerpoint.  (Not really a new feature, but you can use a touch screen instead of a mouse)
  • Excel 2013 has a few new advanced analytic features that will be useful to hedge fund managers and the like.

Here is some of what is in Office 2013 that is new to Office, but catching up with the competition:

  • In Outlook, you can reply in-line (just like Gmail’s conversation view)
  • In Outlook calendar, you can put an address in the location of a meeting and have a link to pull up a map on Bing (just like Google Calendar)
  • You can save a file on your PC and access it on other devices nearly immediately via cloud storage (just like Google Drive and Docs has allowed for years, as have Box, Dropbox, and others)
  • You can have real-time video chat (just like Google Talk), but only if you install a thick client

Here is what you will NOT see with Office 2013:

  • Real-Time Collaboration:  Users are limited to co-authoring — serial editing by one user at a time
  • Office 2013 running on much of your existing equipment:  Office 2013 will only run on Windows 8.  Get ready to pay to upgrade your operating system and your desktops and laptops in order to install Windows 8 and Office 2013
  • Good Support for Macs.  Macs are second class when it comes to MS Office in general, and with the “Windows 8” only message from Microsoft, it is unclear if a full version of Office 2013 will even make it to the Mac platform
  • Smartphone / Tablet Integration:  Granted, you will be able to run Office 2013 (and connect via Office 365) from MS Surface tables and Windows 8 phones — but who is buying those?  Microsoft is hedging on support for iOS (iPhone/iPad) support and has said nothing about Android-based devices.  If you want to run Office 2013 anywhere, be prepared to change your mobile device strategy.

As noted in this analysis of Microsoft’s 2012 10-K filing on ZDnet. Microsoft is clearly using Office 2013 and Windows 8 to create a vertically integrated ecosystem designed to block out other technologies.  The question is, do you want to lock your business into an ecosystem and a company that has failed, and continues to struggle, to innovate?

Live@edu Migrations Will Create Problems for Many Schools

/in

Earlier this month, Microsoft announced the availability of Office 365 for Education and the end of the Live@edu service.   While Redmond Channel Partner reported that schools will have 12 to 18 months to migrate, the migration will pose problems for many schools.

From One Account to Two

According to Microsoft, after the migration, students, faculty, and staff will have two accounts.  SkyDrive and Instant Messenger services will require a personal Windows Live Account, meaning that these services (and others) will be outside of the security and management domain of the Office 365 account.

Loss of Features

The most significant loss of features in the move is the loss of supervision policies. Supervision policies are the rules used to filter “Bad Words” and to manage “Closed Campus” policies.  These feature, critical to how schools manage student accounts and adhere to school policies and regulations, can be recreated manually in Office 365 using PowerShell scripting and a range of admin console settings.

Rebuilding Features

Several features and settings will need to be completely rebuilt as part of the migration process, including:

  • Mailbox Plans, which are limited by license type in Office 365
  • Role Assignment Policies, which cannot be managed at the mailbox level in Office 365, requiring changes to global end user roles and policies that must them be assigned to specific mailboxes

Migration Process

The migration process itself will be problematic for many schools.  Microsoft’s best practice documentation recommends going through the upgrade process from Live@edu to Office 365 before fully configuring the Office 365 service.  The sequence of actions will result in downtime as well as the loss of existing custom URL addresses.

Additionally, individual end users have “before upgrade” tasks to complete that, if not done properly, will require IT staff to touch every machine as a local administrator.

Finally, Microsoft’s own FAQ site mentions that users and administrators may lose the ability to access certain on-page links, the Exchange Control Panel, and many Exchange Control Panel features “for a few days” after the migration.  This could leave users and administrators unable to move forward.

Conclusion

While not as bad as the (almost non-existent) upgrade process from BPOS to Office 365, the migration from Live@edu to Office 365 is demanding technically and with respect to planning, administration, and communication.    The effort to migrate is still comparable to moving from Live@edu to cloud solutions from other vendors, such as Google Apps for Education.

SBS End of Life: Microsoft Punishes Small Businesses

/in

 

Don’t get me wrong.  Companies retire products all the time; New product road maps are a necessary and valuable part of the technology ecosystem.  How a vendor decides to retire a product, however, can be very telling with respect to how they view and treat their customers.  Let’s talk about Microsoft.

Last week, Microsoft announced it’s server options for MS Windows Server 2012, due out sometime later this year.  The announcement included three major components that, while they seem to be unrelated, both impact small and mid-size businesses.  With Windows Server 2012, Microsoft is:

  • Switching from per server to per CPU licensing.
  • Eliminating Small Business Server
  • Restricting which Server licenses can run on virtualized hardware.

In press interviews and its announcements, Microsoft is very clear that businesses running SBS must either now purchase separate Exchange and Sharepoint licenses or must move to the cloud (hopefully Office 365).   The impact, however,  is actually much greater for businesses with fewer than 75 users.

  • Companies with 25 or fewer users can get the new “Essentials” edition of Server 2012.  This version cannot, however, run in a virtual environment.  Small businesses cannot, therefore, buy one server and run Windows, Exchange, and Sharepoint servers virtually without licensing the more expensive Server 2012 Standard Edition.
  • The move to processor-based licensing will also push cost increases on small businesses.  Many SMBs have purchased quad processor boxes to deliver performance and support virtualization.  With a 2 processor limit on Server 2012 Standard Edition, many customers will need to double the number of paid Windows Server licenses.

Microsoft has made it clear that they expect SMBs to switch from SBS to a file server and run Exchange and Sharepoint in the cloud.  This option, too, will represent significant cost increases for SMBs given Microsoft’s pricing model for Office 365 and the need to upgrade specific Office 2010 versions for full functionality.

If this move seems coercive, it just may be.  As reported in PC World, Office 365 has not been the smash hit Microsoft predicted.  The company is not releasing sales or usage numbers.  As a Microsoft spokewoman quoted in the article stated:

“We’re not breaking out customer, user, or revenue numbers at this time”

And according to IDC Analyst Melissa Webster, “They’ll give metrics when the metrics are meaningful, demonstrating scale and depth.”

So with lackluster performance, Microsoft releases a licensing and pricing model that “encourages” SMBs to move into the cloud or pay a heavy hardware and licensing penalty for upgrading in-house systems.

Fortunately, small and mid-size businesses have alternatives.  Google Apps for Business and other services offer more cost effective solutions for email, communication, and collaboration than Office 365. Beyond moving the Exchange and Sharepoint components of SBS to Google Apps, businesses can deploy secure cloud-based file services with full drive letter mapping and network place integration; access from PCs, MACs, and mobile devices; and integrated security and backup/recovery services.

File Sharing vs File Service: The Difference Matters

/in

 

It is time to set the record straight — File Sharing and File Services are NOT the same thing.

  • File Sharing is the ability to share a file with somebody else.
  • A File Service is a structured service to secure, organize, and manage access to files.

File Sharing is a subset of File Services, if not a separate offering.  File Sharing is a feature, while a File Service should provide an integrated means of storing, security, sharing, and managing information.

In Google Apps, both Sites, Drive, Video can be used for File Sharing.  In both services, you can create and/or upload files in all three services and manage permissions that allow others to view and/or edit the files. Google Drive, however, can also be configured to provide a File Service.  With desktop and device agents, you can use the folder and permissions structure in Google Drive to provide users direct, integrated access to files and the access will appear ‘native’ to their computer or mobile device.

In other words, Google Drive can look and feel like a file server, even though it runs as a cloud-base service and offers additional capabilities.

DropBox, Box, and Egnyte are cloud services that can also be configured as File Services.  They run separately, however, so if you want these file services to integrate with other cloud applications, you will be investing in Single Sign On and, possibly, integration services.

With Sharepoint as a major component, Office 365 offers File Sharing along the lines of Google Sites.  SkyDrive, Microsoft’s File Service, is not an integrated part of the Office 365 suite.  Users must run SkyDrive in personal Windows Live accounts.  In effect, this creates a collection of personal file services, not part of the managed domain environment, through which uses may share files.  This is a very different service than an integrated, domain managed file service.

Conclusion

By understanding the differences between File Sharing and File Services, you can better assess the user experience of each service and best match the service to the needs of your business and your end users.

Google Drive or Overdrive?

/in

As more organizations expand their use of Google Apps beyond email into file services, the question of how to best use Google Drive becomes important.  In a previous post, we compared centralized versus distributed use of additional storage.

For many organizations, the question remains as to how best to integrate Google Drive andGoogle Drive Additional Storage with existing, legacy apps on servers and client systems.  Beyond whether or not MS Office stays around, companies often have other systems that run locally using local disk or network drives.

The Google Drive client provides and easy, free, means to sync local data storage with Google Drive and Storage.  The utility, however, has a few limitations:

  • Synchronization of files happens between the My Drive hierarchy in the Google Apps Cloud and a local “Google Drive” folder.  While you can select where the “Google Drive” folder lives, you cannot map existing folders.
  • Users must know where to find and save documents they want synchronized between local disk space and Google Drive.
  • You cannot select specific folders in Google Drive to synchronize down to the client.
  • If a folder is “shared with” a user in Google Drive, the user needs to “move” it under “My Drive” for it to sync to their local disk.

While not a reason to avoid using Google Apps as a file service, using the Google Drive client limits how you deploy your solution and creates some training elements.

Our recommendation is to create a file service using Google Drive that keeps the look and feel of a traditional file service for the end users.   Doing so mitigates training and migration issues and avoids a range of technical issues related to supporting legacy applications.

Look for a solution that offers:

  • A server-specific synchronization tool that does not interfere with existing drive mappings and/or shared network folders.
  • The ability to specify specific folders in Google Drive and/or locally for synchronization.
  • The ability to provide gateway access to cloud-only storage that looks and feels like traditional network disk space.
  • Client applications that run on Windows, Mac, and popular smart phone platforms.
  • That can connect to multiple cloud storage solutions, giving you flexibility in how you configure primary, secondary, and/or archive storage.

While you may spend a few dollars per user per year to get the environment you want, you will see returns.  You should be able to extend the life or retire existing server hardware. With direct access to files, you should be able to reduce (or eliminate) your remote access solutions and/or VPN services, thereby reducing administration, licensing, and support costs.  And best of all, improved collaboration and secure access to information means better productivity for your team and better business results.

 

 

Tuesday Take-Away: Version Control with Google Drive

/in

Google Drive, an integrated component of Google Apps, helps you use Google Apps as a secure file service.  With this capability, you benefit from the revision control built into Google Docs.

Revision Control when Uploading via the Web Interface

When you upload files from the main Google Drive screen, every upload is treated as a separate file, even if the name and source of the file are identical to a previously uploaded file.

To upload a new version of an existing file:

  • Right click on the file name
  • Select Manage Revisions … from the menu
  • Click on Upload New Revision

Revision Control with the Google Drive Sync

If you are running Google Drive on your desktop, every time you save a file, Drive will sync the new revision to Google Docs storage automatically.

Important Retention Rules

By default, Google keeps prior revisions for 30 days and limits the number of revisions to 100.    This means that:

  • Documents that have not been modified for more than 30 days will only have the most recent version available.
  • Auto save features can user up your 100 revision limit quickly.

As an extreme example, if MS Word is set to auto save every 3 minutes and you are editing a document all day, you will only have revisions for the most resent 5 hours.

You can elect to prevent auto deletion for specific revisions by using the same Manage Revisions screen as noted above.  Doing so, however, increases the amount of storage used for the file.